The advisers of the EU Member States began, on Friday 16 June, work on the regulation on crisis management and situations of force majeure, which will also include provisions for responding to situations of instrumentalisation.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties Civil had already adopted its mandate on the subject on 28 March (see EUROPE 13151/6) and hopes that the Council of the EU will be able to adopt its position (‘general approach’) quickly in order to begin the trilogues and stay within the bounds of the EU Council/European Parliament Roadmap, which calls for all the texts of the Pact on Migration and Asylum to be adopted before March 2024.
The first working document from the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council, dated 14 June, does not yet specify the arrangements for solidarity in the event of a mass influx of people, and leaves these elements in square brackets.
The European Parliament, for its part, took the view that the main aid measure in these emergency situations should be based on compulsory relocation and measures to issue protection status under the ‘prima facie’ principle when it is clear that people are fleeing a war situation, for example.
For the time being, the first compromise adjusts the various derogations from the right of asylum and the rules on return, as authorised by this regulation in these extreme situations, as well as the derogations from the material conditions of reception, which have also been made more flexible.
As far as registration deadlines are concerned, which last a few days in normal situations, “applications for protection shall be registered no later than four weeks after they are made in a situation of crisis or force majeure and no later than three weeks after they are made in a situation of instrumentalisation”, states the text.
“In a situation of instrumentalisation, the Member State concerned shall prioritise the registration of applications [...] from persons with special needs as regards the reception of family members of minors. The Member State concerned may also give priority to the registration of applications which are likely to be well-founded. The Member States concerned may also give priority to such requests in situations of crisis or force majeure”, states the text.
In a situation of crisis, instrumentalisation or force majeure, the duration of the border procedure shall not exceed twenty weeks, including appeals, from the date of registration of the application. Following this period, the applicant shall be authorised to enter the Member State’s territory for the completion of the procedure for international protection.
Other derogations provided for: in cases of force majeure or instrumentalisation, “the […] personal interview may be omitted also in case where the determining authority is able to take a positive decision on the basis of the evidence available with regard to the subsidiary protection status”.
For the definition of crisis situations, the draft regulation describes “an exceptional situation of mass influx of third country nationals or stateless persons arriving irregularly in a Member State or disembarked on its territory following search and rescue operations, being of such a scale, in proportion to the population and GDP of the Member State concerned, and nature, that it renders the Member State’s asylum, reception or return system non-functional and can have serious consequences for the functioning the Common European Asylum System” or “an imminent risk of such a situation”.
The instrumentalisation of migrants is a situation in which “a third country or non-state actor encourages or facilitates the movement of third country nationals to the external borders or to a Member State, with the aim of destabilising the Union or a Member State where such actions are liable to put at risk essential functions of a Member State, including the maintenance of law and order or the safeguard of its national security”.
Link to text: https://aeur.eu/f/7jt (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)